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Carlsberg’s Stuart Pearce ad gets red card for dangerous play

UK’s Advertising Standards Authority received a complaint that it broke rules

Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 08:30

In the video, Pearce and an actor drop off a large crate to a building site along with scaffolding football goals

A Carlsberg ad featuring former England footballer Stuart Pearce surprising workers at a building site with a giant crate of beer has been banned for being irresponsible.

The ad, which appeared on the YouTube channel of builders’ merchant TradePoint, featured the former Nottingham Forest manager playing a prank to promote Carlsberg’s sponsorship of the Euro 2016 tournament.

In the video, Pearce and an actor drop off a large crate to a building site along with scaffolding football goals.

As the building foreman protests that the crate is not for them Pearce appears and opens the crate, revealing dozens of boxes of Carlsberg.

The workers cheer and take a break to play football but are not shown drinking beer.

Nevertheless, the Advertising Standards Authority received a complaint from Alcohol Concern that it broke ad rules because it showed a large quantity of beer being delivered to a building site, linking booze with the use of potentially dangerous machinery.

TradePoint, part of B&Q, said that there was no suggestion anyone would drink alcohol in the ad and it was not irresponsible to stage it at a building site.

There was no use of machinery after the beer was delivered and the builders were shown leaving the site with their packs of Carlsberg unopened.

“We considered that the delivery of a large crate of Carlsberg which was then distributed among the workers, even though none was shown to be opened and drunk, linked alcohol with a building site,” said the ASA in its ruling banning the ad.

“Regardless of the possible further link with potentially dangerous machinery, we considered that a building site would be an unsafe and unwise location in which to consume alcohol. Because the ad linked alcohol with that location, we concluded that it breached the [advertising] code”.